Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru

Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru

The weakest of the mahous is still a pretty good mahou.

[MAL][AniDB]

Oh mahous, how you make the world a better place. It’s about time this place gets a review of something that scores higher than 5. Now it doesn’t have to feel so gloomy around here.

Story

The plot is simple. We have a monster that wants to destroy the world for reasons you’d only know if you payed attention, and we have mahous who want to save the world because of friendship. Or in some cases, implicitlesbianship. Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de Aru happens the be the latter. That’s all fine and generic, but this anime sprinkles a little flavor on the story by introducing a choice for the girls. In order to keep this part spoiler free I’ll only go as far as saying that they must decide exactly how much they will sacrifice to protect their daily lives.

Characters

There are 5 main characters who are the members of the hero club:

Karin is a surprisingly pointless character. She is introduced slightly later than the rest of the characters and in a way that gives you an illusion that she has an important background that will be relevant to the story. Either I missed the short part where this happened, or it didn’t. Karin’s identity also seems so clash with Yuuna’s near the end which makes things very awkward. Karin’s only purpose in this anime is to be tsundere.

Tougou is the most developed character. Tougou is the only character who’s internal conflicts matter to the rest and she is the only one that bothers to progress the story in any significant way. Tougou is the “techy” character and Yuuna’s best lesbian. Also she has the largest breasts.

Yuuki Yuuna is the group’s source of concentrated liquid friendship. Yuuna, like Karin, has no back story of any sort, she just suddenly exists. Her obsession with heroism and friendship gives her the strongest identity of the group.

Inubouzaki Fuu is the onee-san. That’s about it.

Inubouzaki Itsuki is the imouto. That’s about it. Also she has the smallest breasts.

Sorry, I can’t read Imouto.

Spoilers (the ending)

I didn’t like the ending. I don’t hate happy endings. What I do hate, are happy endings that are happy for the sake of being happy. The ending explained nothing and solved nothing. The girls got their senses back, even Yuuna and Karin who were essentially veggies got better. That’s okay, the power of friendship and whatnot. But did they even defeat all of the vertex things? We don’t really know. Why did they have to sacrifice their senses in the first place if it was such a simple act to give them back? We don’t know. What about Tougou’s friend who was all screwed up?

┐( ̄ー ̄)┌

Friendship happened, the end.

The writers gave up and had Itsuki write the ending that she wanted.

Conclusion

The overall premiss of Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de aru isn’t new, but it adds just enough flavor to keep me from walking away. Between the average character development and unanswered questions, there is also simple daily friendship and silly happenings to be had in the hero club. I would recommend this show to somebody who doesn’t hate slice of life. The sense of drama was good due to the element of sacrifice, the characters were still interesting despite some not being 10/10 on the “good character scale” but it’s all held together with a slice of life backbone. If you can’t get through the slice of life, you’ll never make it to the rest. Yuuki Yuuna wa Yuusha de aru is one of those shows that I rate extremely high just after finishing it because I had fun watching it, then I drop the score as I look back at it and realize how average certain parts actually were.

It’s not like I’m rating it slightly higher than I should because of the mahous dakara ne!

The Verdict

7Good

The Good:
– Mahou rangers
friendship
– Slice of life
– A dash of flavor

The Bad:
– Some characters lack depth and/or strong identity
– Weak ending
2D side-face

Malware Malware

I’m a human being, trust me.


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